"I thought it looked like it," said the baroness, with more meekness.
"Is that the Lohm who was engaged to one of the Kiederfels girls some years ago?" asked Frau von Treumann.
"Yes, and she died."
"But did he not marry soon afterwards? I heard he married."
"That was the second brother. This one is the eldest, and lives next to us, and is single."
Frau von Treumann was silent for a moment. Then she said blandly, "Now confess, princess, that he is the perilous person from whom you think it necessary to defend Miss Estcourt."
"Oh no," said the princess with equal blandness; "I have no fears about him."
"What, is he too possessed of an invulnerable heart?"
"I know nothing of his heart. I said, I believe, adventurers. And no one could call Axel Lohm an adventurer. I was thinking of men who have run through all their own and all their relations' money in betting and gambling, and who want a wife who will pay their debts."
"Ach so," said Frau von Treumann with perfect urbanity. And if this talk about protecting Miss Estcourt from adventurers in a place where there were apparently no human beings of any kind, but only trees and marshes, might seem to a bystander to be foolishness, to the speakers it was luminousness itself, and in no way increased their love for each other.